The Night Stallions

I don’t know if it’s the snow, lying silent and motionless on the land and now a little threatening with its ice and dark echo on the roads – but dreams have been trampling noisily around my head all night, waking me often and leaving me troubled and exhausted.

The local estate agent selling dusty antiques in the disused foyer of my childhood cinema, a Charlie Chaplin rug, a hole where his moustache ought to be, a marble game for pre-school kids that teaches “if it’s too difficult I’ll give up” in the printed rules and a gilt framed but mould infested print of Fred and Ginger.

A stranger, trying to balance a clay pot on his head that I rescue from the sea, asking my advice and announcing we are neighbours over the-end-of-garden fence, a place I never go since my Dad’s death, and nor he since he moved long before.

The high street of my youth peopled and personed with the folk and events of today or less recent.

Undercurrent of imprecise concerns.